She rejected each of these choices out of hand. Just for tonight she was going to be free from doubt. Chico was in no hurry to let her go, and wasn’t this what she had always dreamed? And when reality far exceeded her wildest dream, wouldn’t it be churlish to waste this opportunity?
It was a sin for a man to feel this good. Imagining them both naked, hot skin to skin, Chico’s big frame against her small body, made her press a little closer to him—not too much as she didn’t want to be too obvious about it. The music called for it, she reassured herself. Chico was so outrageously masculine, what was she supposed to do when every contour of his hard body was rhythmically massaging hers? A frisson of doubt hit when she wondered about his other women. Did he choose to be alone? Did he want to get close to anyone? Were there too many memories in the past he couldn’t share?
She had promised herself she wouldn’t go there. Where women were concerned, Chico would feed when he was hungry and then move on.
‘So, why Fazenda Fernandez, Lizzie?’
She was thrown for a moment. His tone was so matter-of-fact it jolted her straight out of the fantasy, and now she realised that the music had faded to silence and the dance had ended. She should break away, leave his arms, but time seemed suspended—
Time hadn’t been suspended for Chico, Lizzie reasoned sensibly. While she had been happily relaxing into an erotic daze, he had been coldly calculating her reasons for coming here.
Lifting her head from where, she now realised with deep embarrassment, it was comfortably nestled on his chest, she stared him in the eyes. ‘Why not here? It was an easy decision for me to make. The college I attended awarded a scholarship to your ranch, and so I went for it. With my grandmother’s approval,’ she added pointedly. ‘And since that scholarship is funded by you, I can’t think that you would allow anyone to win it that you haven’t thoroughly vetted first.’
‘I have a team to do that for me.’
Of course he had. And she should have known that. Everything in Chico’s world was so much more complicated and sophisticated than the world Lizzie inhabited. You didn’t get to achieve what he had without covering all the bases. It was Chico’s casual manner tonight that had deceived her, but now she realised that there was nothing laid-back or unplanned in his life, because he couldn’t afford to be careless. There was too much at stake in Chico’s fast-moving world to risk losing it.
‘So, why here?’ he repeated. ‘There are other scholarships available at the college you attended.’
Of course he’d done his homework. Of course he knew that she could have gone anywhere in the world where horses were bred with skill and care.
‘You’re the best,’ she said honestly. ‘You train the best, and I want to be the best. I want to follow in your footsteps.’
‘You want to go into competition with me?’ He smiled, his tone deceptively relaxed.
‘I want to set up in business, yes, but in competition with you?’ She laughed. ‘I’m a few million short of the start-up capital.’
‘You’re extremely forthright.’
‘I don’t know any other way to be.’
Chico appeared to relax, but Lizzie doubted she’d ever seen him looking more dangerous.
‘I should warn you that I love competition,’ he whispered in her ear when the music started up again.